Responding to Chinua Achebe’s recent rejection of the title of “father of African literature”, Ghanaian Nii Ayikwei Parkes cheers him on. The comments below Parkes’ post – particularly by African Writing editor Afam Akeh – keep the debate afloat:
As soon as I heard about Chinua Achebe’s rejection of the label “father of modern African literature”, I did two Google searches. One, was for “father of modern European literature” for, surely, if modern African literature has a father, European literature could not possibly be a bastard. The second, was for “father of primitive African literature”, since such a competent fatherless father (which in this case would be Achebe) would be something worth documenting. I hate to disappoint eager readers, but both searches drew a blank.
I thoroughly agree with Achebe’s rejection of the label, because, as he has said, “there were many of us – many, many of us”. The truth is, history is made up of what we choose to accept and shaped by what we reject, and to declare Achebe alone as the “father of modern African literature” is to skew the realities of the world’s second largest continent, a place of multiple languages and identities, that has been sharing and writing stories for longer than the modern English language has existed.
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